Well, if you've been watching the elections, you deserve six and a half minutes of something that has nothing to do with politics…six and a half minutes of something wonderful. You deserve to watch A Tale of Two Kitties, the Warner Brothers cartoon that introduced Tweety…and also two cats named Babbitt and Catstello who sound amazingly like Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Mel Blanc, who often appeared with the non-feline versions, supplied the voice of the Costello Pussycat and also did Tweety, who did not have a name at the time. The Abbott imitation was done by Tedd Pierce, who was one of the storymen who wrote gags for the WB cartoons. He often turned up in them as a voice actor, as well.
The film was directed by the great Bob Clampett, even though you won't see his name on it. This is from a "Blue Ribbon" print of the cartoon, meaning that it was a reissue, put out a few years after the fact with new title cards. (The cartoon was originally released on November 14, 1942.) This was one of the films Bob was really proud of…one of the ones he often ran at festivals and lectures in the seventies. Somewhere in this article, I wrote about an incident that occurred one time when he ran it at a show I helped organize.
Rod Scribner and Robert McKimson were the main animators and I think that's all I have to tell you about it.
